Program Information
Online 3D EPID-Based Dose Verification for Optimum Patient Safety
H Spreeuw , R Rozendaal , I Olaciregui-Ruiz , A Mans , B Mijnheer , M van Herk , P Gonzalez*, Netherlands Cancer Institute - Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, Amsterdam, Noord-Holland
Presentations
WE-D-BRA-4 (Wednesday, July 15, 2015) 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM Room: Ballroom A
Purpose: To develop an online 3D dose verification tool based on EPID transit dosimetry to ensure optimum patient safety in radiotherapy treatments.
Methods: A new software package was developed which processes EPID portal images online using a back-projection algorithm for the 3D dose reconstruction. The package processes portal images faster than the acquisition rate of the portal imager (~ 2.5 fps). After a portal image is acquired, the software seeks for "hot spots" in the reconstructed 3D dose distribution. A hot spot is in this study defined as a 4 cm³ cube where the average cumulative reconstructed dose exceeds the average total planned dose by at least 20% and 50 cGy. If a hot spot is detected, an alert is generated resulting in a linac halt. The software has been tested by irradiating an Alderson phantom after introducing various types of serious delivery errors.
Results: In our first experiment the Alderson phantom was irradiated with two arcs from a 6 MV VMAT H&N treatment having a large leaf position error or a large monitor unit error. For both arcs and both errors the linac was halted before dose delivery was completed. When no error was introduced, the linac was not halted. The complete processing of a single portal frame, including hot spot detection, takes about 220 ms on a dual hexacore Intel Xeon 25 X5650 CPU at 2.66 GHz.
Conclusion: A prototype online 3D dose verification tool using portal imaging has been developed and successfully tested for various kinds of gross delivery errors. The detection of hot spots was proven to be effective for the timely detection of these errors. Current work is focused on hot spot detection criteria for various treatment sites and the introduction of a clinical pilot program with online verification of hypo-fractionated (lung) treatments.
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